It has been nearly 8 years since Joe and I butchered our first chickens. We started with 40 chickens in our backyard before either of the kiddos were born. The chickens were approaching butcher time and we were still watching videos on youtube and preparing ourselves for that first butcher day. Then we had a hurricane on its way, so Joe and I decided to butcher them early. Plus, Joe had just had knee surgery so he was still on crutches. It took us two full days to butcher those 40 chickens, phew!

But I do remember feeling so grateful & in awe of the whole process of watching these chickens be nourished by the land and their feed and ultimately becoming nourishment for us. After reading Lindsey’s words below, I was reignited with why we do what we do and with a renewed passion for the way we choose to farm. She took me back to the beginning of our farm and reminded me of the importance of the work we do.

Hi farm friends!

Lindsey here, your Thursday girl from the Morehead City Mobile Farm Store. I’ve started to learn quite a few names and am recognizing more faces since I’ve been setting up at Social Q for over a month now. As a transplant from Kentucky, it’s exciting to connect with more of the farm friends and find my place in your weekly routine. While I’m learning the in’s and out’s of Shenk Family Farm’s meat provisions, you’ve been wonderfully patient with me. And, I thank you for that! If you’ve been reading farmer Rachel’s emails (or longing all winter for chicken cuts!) you know that chicken processing season has just begun these last few weeks. Personally, this was my first ever “chicken butchering” (or as I humorously refer to it, “cluck and shuck” day) and I discovered something unexpected.

Harvesting food for your own nourishment is almost ceremonial. Did you catch that? We’re not just eating here, folks. Food is, first and foremost, an energy source for our bodies. Consider first, not the chicken you’ll cook for dinner tonight but the grasses growing in the field that raises the chickens. You can drive out Rams Horn road or better yet, take a tour of the land and witness the miraculous, automatic process of nature that is: watching grass grow. Acres of native grasses spread out like natures rug, hiding grubs and insects between its fibers.

The chickens live in these pastures, and as the grasses use nutrients from the earth like nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium to grow, those nutrients (via the grass) become part of the diet for the insects, and then for the chickens. It’s the food cycle, as straight forward today as it was in elementary school. It seems though, somewhere along the way, we allowed ourselves to be removed from the source of our food, and we forgot that nature has it all perfectly worked out for us. While chickens are supplemented with a grain feed, it’s the ability for natural cycles to play out in this way as much as possible that makes locally raised meat significant.

By the time chicken processing begins, these chickens have transformed the most humble of caloric sources into perfect macronutrients for my own body, all by doing what they are created and meant to do: Forage in the field all day. Thank you, chickens, for being you!

In this light, processing day took on a meaning I hadn’t expected. My hands became tools; the knife an extension of my tool box. My senses taught me to feel where to carefully make cuts and the stories shared among fellow farm help brought camaraderie to the task. I accepted with gratitude the understanding that the birds would become meals not meant to be “quick, fast, easy” empty calories out of a box and into the gullet. It was a relationship between meat and consumer to give thanks for, to acknowledge the gift of nutrition and nourishment, and to celebrate the synergy of nature, creature, and farmer.